If the first well blew out on feb 3, then why didn't any oil hit the beaches? Surely it wouldn't take 4 months.

This is the first thing I thought about, as well, when I first read this thread.

With a full month and a half of oil gushing, shouldn't SOMEONE have noticed and raised a curious eyebrow?

i'm not sure you realize how large an area we are talking about...

Quoting: Ocean Motion

Oh, I'm sure I don't fully realize just how large an area this is, but it's still within 50 miles of the shoreline, not in the middle of the GOM.

So given what we already know about how far the oil can spread in the 85+ days since we've been "told" about the spill, shouldn't we be able to figure out how far it could have spread between Feb 13 and April 20th?